Updated: Power restored to Mercy Clinic East

Alliant Energy workers load an old transformer onto a truck after replacing it with a new one at Mercy Clinic East on Tuesday morning.

Dan Lassiter/dlassiter@gazettextra.com

A crew from Alliant Energy installs a new transformer at Mercy Clinic East in Janesville on Tuesday morning after the old one failed, causing the clinic to shut down for several hours.

JANESVILLE—Power has been restored at Mercy Clinic East, where the east side clinic had been turning away patients since about 7 a.m. because of a power outage, an official said.

Clinic Director Randy McGrath said an Alliant Energy transformer that serves only Mercy East blew. Power was restored just before 1 p.m.

The building was resuming normal operations around 1 p.m., and patients with appointments for this afternoon should still come in, unless they received a phone call saying otherwise, he said.

Patients with appointments this morning were called and rescheduled, McGrath said. A skeleton crew was working at Mercy East this morning to help those who show up for appointments or come in to the urgent care. Those with immediate needs were being referred to other Mercy clinics in Janesville.

Mercy East did not have the ability to call out, so Mercy Helpline was making the rescheduling calls.

Emergency lights were working at the clinic, but no patients could be treated, McGrath said.

McGrath said he was not sure how many patients are affected.

“It's a large building, so probably quite a few,” McGrath said. “We will do our utmost to make sure we see them after 1 p.m. and hopefully don't disrupt their daily lives too much.”

The clinic and other Mercy clinics might have to operate later than usual today to accommodate everyone, McGrath said.

Alliant officials said they don't know what caused the transformer to fail and that such failures are rare.